February 2013Teacher's Guide for

Drivers, Start Your Electric Engines!

Table of Contents

About the Guide

Student Questions

Answers to Student Questions

Anticipation Guide

Reading Strategies

Background Information

Connections to Chemistry Concepts

Possible Student Misconceptions

Anticipating Student Questions

In-class Activities

Out-of-class Activities and Projects

References

Web sites for Additional Information

More Web sites on Teacher Information and Lesson Plans

About the Guide

Teacher’s Guide editors William Bleam, Donald McKinney, Ronald Tempest, and Erica K. Jacobsen created the Teacher’s Guide article material. E-mail:

Susan Cooper prepared the anticipationand reading guides.

Patrice Pages,ChemMatters editor, coordinated production and prepared the Microsoft Word and PDF versions of the Teacher’s Guide. E-mail:

Articles from past issues of ChemMatters can be accessed from a CD that is available from the American Chemical Society for $30. The CD contains all ChemMatters issues from February 1983 to April 2008.

The ChemMatters CD includes an Index that covers all issues from February 1983 to April 2008.

The ChemMatters CD can be purchased by calling 1-800-227-5558.

Purchase information can be found online at

Student Questions

  1. Name two advantages for the electric car.
  2. For what use is the electric car primarily designed?
  3. What helps to minimize “range anxiety”?
  4. True or false: The first electric car was the Nissan Leaf. Explain your answer.
  5. What is the chemical term for the process that happens at the lead plate in a lead-acid battery? Describe this process.
  6. What happens when a lead-acid battery recharges?
  7. What type of battery is used in today’s electric cars?
  8. Describe the composition of the two electrodes in a lithium-ion battery.
  9. List four advantages that lithium-ion batteries have over lead-acid batteries.
  10. List three disadvantages of using electric cars.

Answers to Student Questions

  1. Name two advantages for the electric car.

Advantages of the electric car are:

a)Fewer moving parts, so less maintenance is required,

b)Brakes, part of the energy-recovery system, last much longer than ordinary car brakes.

  1. For what use is the electric car primarily designed?

City driving is the main use for which electric cars are designed. This includes commuting, running local errands and trips around town.

  1. What helps to minimize “range anxiety”?

Onboard computers in electric cars indicate level of charge and remaining range of travel, making it less likely that you will allow the battery to run down, minimizing “range anxiety”.

  1. True or false: The first electric car was the Nissan Leaf. Explain your answer.

This statement is false. Electric cars were built as early as 1828, and had become prevalent in the 1900s, until improvements in the gasoline-powered car gave it dominance.

  1. What is the chemical term for the process that happens at the lead plate in a lead-acid battery? Describe this process.

Oxidation occurs at the lead plate in the lead-acid battery. This process involves the loss of electrons from the lead plate as it reacts to form lead(II) sulfate.

  1. What happens when a lead-acid battery recharges?

Recharging a lead-acid battery involves pumping electrons into the battery from an outside source. This causes the oxidation of lead(II) to lead(IV), releasing two electrons in the process.

  1. What type of battery is used in today’s electric cars?

Today’s electric cars (unlike those of the 1900s, which used lead-acid batteries) use lithium-ion batteries.

  1. Describe the composition of the two electrodes in a lithium-ion battery.

The cathode (the positive terminal) is made of “a type of layered lithium oxide, such as lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2)”, while the “negative electrode, or anode, is made of graphite—a form of pure carbon.

  1. List four advantages that lithium-ion batteries have over lead-acid batteries.

Four advantages of lithium-ion batteries over lead-acid batteries:

a)They’re much lighter (think atomic weights: Li, 7; Pb, 207)

b)Lithium is much more reactive than lead, providing a higher charge density, 6:1 over lead.

c)Lithium-ion batteries hold a charge much longer than lead-acid batteries. They only lose 5% of their charge per month.

d)They have no “memory effect”, so they can be recharged at any level of charge.

  1. List three disadvantages of using electric cars.

Three disadvantages of electric cars:

a)Their relatively short range of travel

b)Their high price

c)Their contribution to pollution, since the electricity they use for recharging is generated by burning coal.

Anticipation Guide

Anticipation guides help engage students by activating prior knowledge and stimulating student interest before reading. If class time permits, discuss students’ responses to each statement before reading each article. As they read, students should look for evidence supporting or refuting their initial responses.

Directions: Before reading, in the first column, write “A” or “D” indicating your agreement or disagreement with each statement. As you read, compare your opinions with information from the article. In the space under each statement, cite information from the article that supports or refutes your original ideas.

Me / Text / Statement
  1. Electric cars require much less maintenance than cars with internal combustion engines.

  1. Electric cars in use today require 220-volt charging stations.

  1. Today’s electric cars can travel about 400 miles before being recharged.

  1. Electric cars were available in the early 20th century.

  1. Lead-acid batteries can be recharged indefinitely.

  1. Lead-acid batteries are found in today’s golf carts and gasoline-fueled cars.

  1. Lithium batteries were not developed until the late 20th century.

  1. Lithium-ion batteries are much lighter than lead-acid batteries, and they can store much more energy per kilogram than lead-acid batteries.

Reading Strategies

These matrices and organizers are provided to help students locate and analyze information from the articles. Student understanding will be enhanced when they explore and evaluate the information themselves, with input from the teacher if students are struggling. Encourage students to use their own words and avoid copying entire sentences from the articles. The use of bullets helps them do this. If you use these reading strategies to evaluate student performance, you may want to develop a grading rubric such as the one below.

Score / Description / Evidence
4 / Excellent / Complete; details provided; demonstrates deep understanding.
3 / Good / Complete; few details provided; demonstrates some understanding.
2 / Fair / Incomplete; few details provided; some misconceptions evident.
1 / Poor / Very incomplete; no details provided; many misconceptions evident.
0 / Not acceptable / So incomplete that no judgment can be made about student understanding

Teaching Strategies:

  1. Links to Common Core State Standards: There are several opportunities to compare alternatives in this issue of ChemMatters. For example, you might ask students to take sides and find support for one of the following:
  2. Using brand-name vs. generic drugs
  3. Driving electric cars vs. cars with internal combustion engines
  1. To help students engage with the text, ask students what questions they still have about the articles.
  1. Vocabulary that may be new to students:
  2. VOCs
  3. Internal combustion engine
  1. Important chemistry concepts that will be reinforced in this issue:
  2. Reaction rate
  3. Oxidation and reduction

Directions: As you read, compare lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries using the chart below.

Lead-Acid Battery / Lithium-ion Battery
When were they developed?
What chemicals are involved?
How do they work?
What are the electrodes made of?
Where are they used?
Compare the reactivity of the metals involved.

Background Information

(teacher information)

More on the history of electric cars

As mentioned in the article, electric cars were more popular than gasoline powered cars in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In addition to being easier to start (no manual crank like gasoline-powered cars) and having no gears to change while driving, they were also quieter and did not have any smells attached to them, as did gasoline cars. Some electric car and truck drivers utilized exchangeable batteries, instead of recharging their own. Typical use for electric cars in those times was for city driving, much like electric cars today (so far). In those days that was sufficient because most roads were confined to urban areas. Typical drivers were the well-to-do and women, due to ease of operating the electric cars. Taxi companies also used electric cars.

Popular use of electric cars also occurred because they were more economical to drive than gasoline cars. But gradually, as mass production (think, Henry Ford and his assembly line) resulted in cheapergasoline-powered cars (half the cost of an electric car), other technological advanceslike the electric starter were made, improved highways were developed, and a national gasoline pipeline infrastructure became reality, the internal combustion engine became the propulsion mechanism of choice and electric car sales declined significantly. By the 1930s, the electric car was all but gone from US roadways.

Here’s an interesting story from the early days of electric cars involving the use of a car on a cold night.

Perhaps you have noted that if you have been trying to start the car and you let it "rest" for a few minutes the battery will have renewed zest. Why?

A Related Anecdote--from the Life of Eddie Rickenbacker

Concerning his trip in a Waverly Electric Car taken without permission from his employer. He was about 14 years old of the time (1904).

Contributed by Arra Nergararian, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

"After supper I started back to the garage. Mr. Evans would be in next morning. . . But I hadn't gone one quarter of the way when the little car began to give signs that I had driven it too much. It slowed down and came to astop. It was out of juice. The batteries were dead. Darkness was coming on and I had a mile and a half to go . . . no wrecker service . . . only the Evans Garage which was going to be minus its one employee should its irate owner return to find said employee out with a customer's car.

"In discussing electrical energy with me, Evans had observed that frequently a battery would regain some current if allowed to sit idle for awhile . . . I decided to wait an hour. Never had time dragged so slowly. My Ingersoll dollar watch was in and out of my pocket a. dozen times . . .I gingerly pushed the control lever, fully expecting nothing to happen, but . . . the car lurched forward . . . several blocks before it died. Again I sat for an hour . . . the refreshed batteries took me a few more blocks. As the night wore on, the hope became shorter and the waits longer, but finally about 3:00 A.M. I reached the garage. I hooked up the battery charger and took the streetcar home. . . ."

(J. Chem. Educ., 1970, 47 (5), p 383, DOI:10.1021/ed047p383.1, alsoonline at subscription required to read content)

In the US, little progress was made in the electric vehicle arena, until the 1990s. The energy crises of the 1970s and ‘80s renewed interest in electric cars, as potential buyers viewed them as a way to exert energy independence from oil shortages and crude oil price increases.

General Motors actually produced an electric car in 1994, that proved to be a commercial bust. Called the EV1, it was a two-seater sports coupe that was simply battery powered. A total of only 1400 vehicles were sold. One major problem was price. The EV1 had a cost about 30% higher than comparable traditional vehicles. General Motors’ states that its own customer research has lead it to believe that the typical consumer will not pay more for a vehicle just for the “sake of the environment.” Another problem was that the range of the car was only about 60 miles before recharging was required. Northern winters posed another problem to EV1 drivers---Run the heater or run the car, your choice!

(ChemMatters Teacher’s Guide, December 2000)

Yet another problem with the EV1 was that the state of California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) rescinded its stringent air quality law requiring more energy-efficient, low-emissions vehicles, eventually moving to zero-emissions vehicles. The eventual rescission of the law was due to continued pressure from automobile manufacturers and the oil industry. It was this law that had pushed GM’s research into and production of the EV1 in the first place. This new, less-stringent atmosphere in California law resulted in fewer people interested in purchasing the all-electric vehicle and a subsequent lack of sales. GM eventually recalled all the EV1 electric cars and demolished them, save for a very few, stripped of their batteries, that were donated to museums. A 2006 feature-length film that discussed this situation, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, appeared at the Sun Dance Film Festival. Apparently it is still available as a DVD, available on Amazon for $9.52 at the time of the writing of this Teacher’s Guide.It’s also available on Netflix at

Around the world, many multiple-passenger battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) have been produced and put in trial-use since the mid-1990s. Many bus and shuttle BEVs are in use today for urban transit that take advantage of the BEV’s lack of emissions. Often these vehicles have their batteries swapped out for recharge, in order to allow 24-hour operation of the vehicles. Vans and trucks that operate in urban settings have also been fitted out with batteries for electric propulsion.(

In 1910, Seoul, South Korea was the first city to put into use a fleet of five (soon thereafter to be 14) commercial electric buses, which utilize Li-ion batteries,for part of its transit system. Recharge times for these batteries is under 30 minutes! Their plan is to have 120,000 electric vehicles in use in the city by 2020.

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More on electric carsand the environment

Studies have shown that battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) are environmentally friendly, relative to today’s gasoline-powered cars. One such study, “Contribution of LI-Ion Batteries to the Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles”, published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science Technology, reported the results of tests that compared the environmental impact of the BEV with that of the internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). Their report on BEVs and ICEVs used four different assessment methods. All four methods showed that ICEVs had greater negative impact on the environment than BEVs, in one method by as much as 60%. And these findings were based on a “new efficient gasoline car”. “This ICEV consumes 5.2 L of gasoline per 100 km.”This is equivalent to 45.2 miles per gallon, so they are comparing BEVs to a very technologically advanced ICEV, not the typical car on the road in the U.S. today. (You might want to have students do the conversion for themselves, using dimensional analysis.)

In analyzing the environmental impact, the study says

There are no differences between ICEV and BEV withrespect to the environmental burden related to road use(infrastructure, maintenance, and disposal) and the glider [the body of the car, without the propulsion system].Small differences are related to the drivetrain, maintenance,and disposal of the car. The main difference is reflected inthe operation phase, which rises far above the impact of thebattery.

(Notter, D. et al. Contribution of Li-Ion Batteries to the Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles. Environmental Science & Technology, 2010, 44 (17), pp 6550–6556) abstract here:

Operation of the BEV does not produce air pollutants as does the ICEV. Discussion here also must take into account the environmental impact of creating the electricity needed to recharge the batteries in BEVs. The study found that even including the pollution produced from burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity to recharge the Li-ion batteries, less pollution was produced by BEVs. Actually, the choice of electricity generation was the major factor in the environmental impact of BEVs.

…the choice of the electricity generation led to considerablevariations in the results. Propelling a BEV with electricityfrom an average hard coal power plant increases theenvironmental burden by 13.4%. On the other hand, usingelectricity from an average hydropower plant decreasesenvironmental burden by 40.2%. This results in a decreasefor the operation from 41.8% to 9.6% whencharging the battery with electricity from hydropowerplants.

(Notter, D. 6550-6556)